Juvenal

Like a power sequence that was in the specification that never made it into the code.

2,000 years ago, Roman poet Juvenal asked a question that shows up in nearly every conversation about oversight.

Who will guard the guards? For most of history, that was a question about people, but now it's also a question about software.

So take this failure out of OpenAI's research lab, where a world-class safety team is watching.

You see, black swans, just like pulsars, weren't always widely known to exist as we know today.

Indeed, in the second century AD, the Roman poet Decimus Junius Juvenalis wrote that a perfect wife is a rare bird in the earth and most similar to a black swan.

At that time, black swans were thought to not exist and so this phrase propagated accordingly into English language.

In fact, in Tudor London, the expression was commonly used to say that something was impossible.

Then I will try what I may say of those worthies whose ashes lie under the Flamanian and Latin roads.

End of Satire 1 Satire 2 of the Satires by Juvenal Translated by George Gilbert Ramsey This Leepervox recording is in the public domain.

Satire 2 Translated by J. J. Ramsey Moralists without morals I would faint flee to Sarmatia and the frozen sea When people who ate the curry and live like bacchanals Dare talk about morals.

In the first

CHAPTER III.

LIBRIVOX

Recording by Cynthia Moyer Satires by Juvenal Translated by G. G. Ramsey Satire 3 Quid Romai Faciam though put out by the departure of my old friend i commend his purpose to fix his home at kumai and to present one citizen to the sibyl that is the gate of bei a sweet retreat upon a pleasant shore i myself would prefer even prokita to the sabura for where has one ever seen a place so dismal and so lonely that one would not deem it worse to live in perpetual dread of fires and falling houses and the thousand perils of this terrible city and poets spouting in the month of august but while all his goods and chattels were being packed upon a single wagon my friend halted at the dripping archway of the old porta capena here numa held his nightly assignations with his mistress but now the holy fount and grove and shrine are let out to jews who possess a basket and a truss of hay for all their furnishings for as every tree nowadays has to pay toll to the people the muses have been ejected and the wood has to go a-begging we go down to the valley of egeria and into the caves so unlike to nature how much more near to us would be the spirit of the fountain if its waters were fringed by a green border of grass and there were no marble to outrage the native tufa here spoke umbritius since there is no room quoth he for honest callings in this city no reward for labor since my means are less to-day than they were yesterday and to-morrow will rub off something from the little that is left i purpose to go to the place where daedalus put off his weary wings while my white hairs are recent while my old age is erect and fresh while lachasus has something left to spin and i can support myself on my own feet without slipping a staff beneath my hand farewell my country let artorius live there and catullus let those remain who turn black into white to whom it comes easy to take contracts for temples rivers or harbors for cleansing drains or carrying corpses to the pyre or to put up slaves for sale under the authority of the spear these men once were hornblowers who went the round of every provincial show and whose puffed-out cheeks were known in every village to-day they hold shows of their own and win applause by slaying with a turn of the thumb whomsoever the mob bids them slay from that they go back to contract for cesspools and why not for any kind of thing seeing that they are of the kind that fortune raises from the gutter to the mighty places of earth whenever she wishes to enjoy a laugh what can i do at rome i cannot lie if a book is bad i cannot praise it and beg for a copy i am ignorant of the movements of the stars i cannot and will not promise to a man his father's death i have never examined the entrails of a frog i must leave it to others to carry to a bride the presents and messages of a paramour no man will get my help in robbery and therefore no governor will take me on his staff i am treated as a maimed and useless trunk that has lost the power of its hands what man wins favor nowadays unless he be an accomplice one whose soul seethes and burns with secrets that must never be disclosed no one who has imparted to you an innocent secret thinks he owes you anything or will ever bestow on you a favor the man whom verus loves is the man who can impeach verus at any moment that he chooses ah let not all the sands of the shaded tagus and the gold which it rolls into the sea be so precious in your eyes that you should lose your sleep and accept gifts to your sorrow which you must one day lay down and be for ever a terror to your mighty friend and now let me speak at once of the race which is most dear to our rich men and which i avoid above all others no shyness shall stand in my way i cannot abide quirites a rome of greeks and yet what fraction of our dregs comes from greece the syrian orontes has long since poured into the tiber bringing with it its lingo and its manners its flutes and its slanting harp-strings bringing too the timbrels of the breed and the trolls who are bidden ply their trade at the circus out upon you all ye that delight in foreign strumpets with painted head-dresses your country clown quirinus now trips to dinner in greek fangled slippers and wears nicetarian ornaments upon a keromatic neck one comes from lofty sicyon another from amadon or andros others from samos tralles or alabanda all making for the esquilin or for the hill that takes its name from osierbeds all ready to worm their way into the houses of the great and become their masters quick of wit, and of unbounded impudence, they are as ready of speech as Isaias, and more torrential.

Say, what do you think that fellow there to be? He has brought with him any character you please, grammarian, orator, geometrician, painter, trainer, or rope-dancer, augur, doctor, or astrologer.

Preemptively, really, right? Nobody made them, as far as I know, unless it's a social engineering situation altogether.

But who will watch the watchers, said Juvenal, right? Who will watch the watchers? Who's going to tell us? Who's going to break the bad news that the reason the prices on everything are up way higher is because of what's happening with artificial intelligence? Who's going to tell you that the reason we are stealing oil from everyone on the planet is because we've got to fill the generators, the gas generators, the backup generators? for AI data centers so that they can run? Do they run on gas? Or do they probably run on natural gas if they're smart, right? Who's going to tell us these things? See, I think we're in the thick of everything that we think we're preparing for right now.

I really do.

I think we're living what we think we should be preparing for in terms of AI right now.

Two lines, two wines, and a thoroughly insulted dinner guest.

The Roman satirist Juvenal made similar observations about wealthy hosts who served themselves excellent food and wine while offering inferior fare to their guests.

The message was unmistakable.

The wine in your glass reflected your position at the table.

Festinet enim decure velox flasculas angustae miserique brevissima vitae portio dum bibimus dum syrta unguenta puellas possimus obriput non intellecta senectus.

Juvenal, Satires.

And when at last thy love shall die, Wilt thou receive his parting breath? Wilt thou repress each struggling sigh, And cheer with smiles the bed of death? Percy.

Several meanings of the word church, the building so called here intended, its antiquity and grandeur, columns and aisles, the tower, the stains made by time compared with the mock antiquity of the artist, progress of vegetation on such buildings, bells, tombs, one in decay, mural monuments and the nature of their inscriptions, an instance in a departed burgess, churchyard graves, mourners for the dead, a story of a betrothed pair in humble life, and effects of grief in the survivor.

Letter eight, Trades.

"Non possidentem multa vocaveris Recta beatum: rexius occupat nomen Beatae, qui deorum muneribus Sapienter uti darumque calet Paperem pati." Horace, Ode nine.

"Non propter vitam faciunt Patrimonia quidem, sed vitio Caeci propter patrimonia vivunt." Juvenal, Satire twelve.

"Non uxor salvam te vult, non filius: Omnes vicini oderunt, noti Pueri atque puellae.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard this one.

This is Juvenal, isn't it? This is the writer, or is it?

It's both Juvenal and Pliny, and then a later source called Aurelius Victor, who is super interesting, but writing about 250 years later.

Our first one chronologically would be Pliny, who's writing about 30 years after her death.

And he talks about, Pliny is an encyclopedist.

yeah it must have been kind of a modern Italian queuing system

but these are the stories see that's our first clue then that this is complete cobblers so the story is that she goes to the brothel she challenges the local sex worker the best sex worker to a shagging competition that's our other clue really i think it's just not gonna happen that's no that's just that's a very male fantasy of like just sex with those is so good that a woman would just uh tottle off down to a brothel to have sex a load of men that she didn't know off the street because they would be that good at it

And then it gets kind of even worse when we get Juvenal's account.